Heart Disease. Why don't we talk about it? - Part 1

By Ben Tyler, 925 Owner and Head Coach

I recently stumbled across a twitter post by Bill Gates showing the bias our media has towards things that will keep people paying attention to them. Not surprisingly, what they tend to cover is A) controversial, B) is generally fear based (to keep you coming back), and C) is guided by whatever their current narrative is (be it left or right leaning, or simply what they think will keep ratings high). You can find his tweet here and the image below.

Most of what you see in the statistics for media coverage versus what really kills us is not too surprising. These things fit their talking points, keep us on edge and generally ready to argue/debate or try to get a politician to do something. At first, I read this and didn’t think much about it as it media bias and drama seem to be the sad norm of what we deal with.

However, after looking at it for a few more minutes, I noticed something profound in the difference between actual statistical cause of death and the google search statistics. A condition we actually have some decent control of (outside of genetic and a few other factors), Heart Disease, was googled an amazingly low 2% of the searches. (Heart Disease accounts for a mind-boggling 30% of the deaths in the U.S.)

The questions I have in my mind are: Why doesn’t anyone seem interested in what’s killing 30% of us? Are we (health and wellness professionals) failing to address the potential, and very serious, risks of an unhealthy lifestyle? Or maybe we’re simply happy to hop on statins, other pharmaceuticals, or deal with an operation after we have a heart attack?

I believe we’ve (again, health and wellness professionals) failed to continue educating those around us on how Heart Disease happens and how we can help minimize the risks of developing it. There are ways to help fend it off and live a longer, more functional, healthy life without becoming a statistic. I’ll touch on this in Part 2!